Finn and Marceline
by Planet Cool
Summary: Jake experiences jealousy and loneliness after Finn starts spending more time with Marceline.
1. The Midas Well

Finn and Marceline

By Planet Cool

1. The Midas Well

Early one morning, before the sun was up, Jake tied the end of his tail to the nearest tree that wouldn't morally object to it and began his steady descent into the Midas Well. The Midas Well was a particularly dark, particularly deep well (hence the name) in the very northwestern corner of the Land of Ooo, and the site of a lost treasure map that pointed the way to wonders untold, according to a blathering, sandwich board-wearing lunatic he and Finn had overheard whilst strolling casually through town one afternoon. Reliable testimony, if ever Jake had heard it.

Jake's tail wasn't only his means of getting into the well, it would also keep him from getting lost in the labyrinth of rooms that lay beneath. The well had been commissioned, or so Jake had heard from a different sandwich board-wearing lunatic, by a denizen of the Candy Kingdom as a means to hide from the haunting sense of shame he felt about having been caught licking his own lollipop in the communal showers that one time at summer camp; it was full of wrong turns, trap doors, and gyrating walls, and Jake had to make certain he'd find the right path out once he'd gotten the map, like Theseus in the lair of the minotaur, back when the minotaur still hung around in that kind of place.

Jake found the map, rather predictably, sitting on a podium. The chamber had certainly undergone some radical redecoration, unless our friend from the Candy Kingdom had some pressing personal issues to work out, which, upon further contemplation on Jake's part, wasn't all that unlikely. Skull motifs all around, and there were giant stone snakes wrapping around the pillars that held up the ceiling. Nice touch, that. Ominous. It really made an adventurer feel like he'd accomplished something when he passed through the entryway.

"Hey there, baby, how're _you_ doing?" Jake said, taking the map from its podium, at which point a screaming monstrosity with muscles the size of small mobile homes jumped out from the shadows and swung a huge battle axe at him.

"Whoa! Be careful with that, would you? I'm carrying precious cargo here!" Jake said, twisting himself into a parabola to avoid bisection. "Honestly, what's your deal, man, swinging an axe like that in the middle of the darkness? You could put someone's eye out."

The beast punched himself in the chest. "I am the Guardian of the Well!" he shouted, more loudly than was necessary. "Anyone wishing to take the map from its holy resting place has to get through me, first!"

Jake looked at the map, confused. "What's so holy about it?" he asked.

"What do you mean?" said the axe-wielding monster. "It's a treasure map sitting on a podium in the middle of an underground labyrinth full of idols and junk. It's gotta be holy to _someone_, or at least slightly sacred. Otherwise, what would be the point of guarding it?"

"You tell me, chief."

The Guardian of the Well pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay, look," he said. "The past few millennia have been really tough for me, all right? There isn't a whole lot to do down here. I haven't even had a chance to catch up on my literature for a thousand years. I've been sitting here since the dawn of the Great Mushroom War, thinking violent thoughts, waiting for someone to try and take the map so I could cut them with my axe. Let's just have our big fight and get it over with, if that's all right with you. It's been a hell of a wait."

Jake's expression soured. "Do we… _have_ to fight, in the strictest sense?"

"Well, yeah!" said the monster. "I fight to protect the map. It's pretty much the entire premise of my existence, you see."

Jake sighed unhappily. "Well, okay, but we'd better make it quick. Then sun will come up soon, and I need to be home before my buddy Finn wakes up. We could miss out on precious adventuring hours." He put his little fists up unenthusiastically and was surprised when the monster didn't raise his axe or return the gesture.

"Oh. An adventuring buddy, huh?" the Guardian said, the lust for bloodshed in his gaze suddenly substituted with nostalgia. "I used to have me one of those. 'Course, this was back in the good old days, before the War and what-have-you. Things sure were different then. Simpler. I only had one pancreas."

"Yeah, it sure is great to have a friend," Jake said with a smile. "What happened to _your_ adventuring buddy?"

The Guardian of the Well shrugged his mountainous shoulders. "Oh, you know. Things change. Friends grow apart. I ate him to acquire his abilities. Same old story."

The small yellow dog rubbed his chin. "I see how that might have happened," he said. "Well, so long, man. Thanks for the map. So many princesses to save and monsters to kill, so little time." Jake waved good-bye and began to walk out.

"So, we're really not going to fight, are we?" came the voice from behind.

Feeling a pang of compassion for the slobbering behemoth, Jake paused in mid-step and thought about things. "All right, how about this," he said at last. "If I maybe shove you a little and you tap me lightly on the head with the flat side of your axe… would that technically count as a fight?"

"Hmm," said the Guardian of the Well. "I guess it could, given the right context."

"Okay, then, why don't we try it?" Jake said.

He sauntered over to the Guardian and pushed him softly on the knee. Unable to hold back a giggle, the Guardian tapped Jake on the head with the flat side of his axe. Jake felt as though he'd just been knighted. He couldn't stop himself from giggling, either.

"How was that? Feeling better?"

"Sort of," the Guardian replied, following a short pause. "Not that much, though. You know, in retrospect, I can't imagine why I thought it was a good idea to live in a labyrinth and cut people up in the first place. The whole shtick seems kind of passé."

"Good," Jake said. "Recognizing your own mistakes is the first step on the path toward self-improvement."

"That's deep, man," said the Guardian. "Religious philosophy?"

"Nah, I read it on a sandwich board some lunatic was wearing," Jake said. Then, after having thought about it more deeply: "Though I guess it could be both."

This was a third sandwich board-wearing lunatic, by the way, totally different from the other two. Crippling insanity, along with donut bushes and puffy rainbow-tinted fungal growths that hid on the inside of hollow logs and made hilariously offensive sounds when you squeezed them, would surely have been among Ooo's chief exports, had any other place existed.

"Wait!" shouted the Guardian of the Well.

Jake turned to face him again, a little miffed this time. "Seriously, dude, the clock's a-ticking. I'm planning something really special today, and if you keep interrupting I'll never get around to it."

The Guardian rubbed the back of his head. "I'm sorry," he said, chuckling awkwardly. "It's just that, well, now that there's no map to guard I don't see the point of prowling around here anymore. I'm thinking, y'know, maybe it's time to leave the past behind and start from scratch. Get some fresh air, expand my social circle, maybe go into accounting and meet a nice gal. Do you think you could, um, take me with you?"

Jake bit his bottom lip. "Oh. Wow. I'm not so sure about that. Take you with me where?"

The Guardian waved his arms around, encompassing the whole room and nearly cutting the heads off a few sculpted snakes. "Outside. Anywhere, really. I just want to get out of this death pit. I don't like the way the rats stare at me when I sleep at night."

Jake paced from side to side for a moment, giving the matter some thought. After a few minutes he turned to the Guardian of the Well. "Well, okay. I guess I could do that. Everyone deserves a second crack at life, after all. Just promise me you'll keep the homicidal rampages to a minimum once you're on the surface. People up there tend to frown on that sort of thing."

"It's a deal!" the Guardian said happily. "Shake on it?"

Jake took the Guardian's hand and wrapped his arm around it like a rubber band. "Hold on tight!" he said.

His tail recoiled like a spring; both he and the guardian shot through the labyrinth at top speed. Within seconds, they'd be back on the surface.

_To be continued..._


	2. Hide and Seek

2. Hide and Seek

With that nasty little incident behind him, Jake inflated himself until he was as big as a blimp, and just as full of hot air. He sailed the wind, high above the clouds, and reached the tree house he and Finn shared only a few minutes after saying good-bye to the Guardian of the Well, who'd chased the horizon with a sanguine skip in his step until he finally vanished from Jake's sight.

Spotting the tree house beneath him, Jake gradually deflated until he had returned to his normal size. Using the map as a parachute, he floated gently onto the grass. Then, he took off at once to show what he'd managed to get his hands on to his best buddy in the whole wide world, and couldn't they do something really, really cool with it, pretty please? Dogs can be like that sometimes.

"Hey, Finn, check it out! I spent all morning digging this puppy up!" he shouted as he rushed up the stairs to the living room, Finn and Jake's favorite area for chilling out, gorging on ice cream, and playing video games when they weren't out having adventures. "It's a treasure map. It has a big red X on it and all that jazz! Wanna see what it leads to?"

Jake stumbled to a halt, and not a second too soon; had he kept running, he would have bonked his nose against the polished mahogany. Finn had shut the living room door, an unusual occurrence. Jake jiggled the doorknob and found it locked.

He knocked on the door three times. "Yo, buddy, are you in there? We gotta go, man, adventure beckons," he called, but no one said anything in return. Impatient, he pressed one ear against the door and listened intently, hoping to take advantage of his advanced canine hearing. He could have sworn he heard quiet whispers on the other side, and maybe, just maybe, some laughter as well.

"All right, dude, that's enough. This is weird. I'm coming in."

Key hand time. Jake, resourceful as always, kneaded his hand until it fit snugly into the keyhole and picked the lock in a matter of seconds. He started to push the door inwards, but, almost at once, a much stronger push opposite his slammed it back into place. Jake stumbled backwards and landed squarely on his behind.

He got on his feet and rubbed his aching rump. "What's the deal, man? That was totally not cool!" he said, indignant.

"Sorry," said Finn. He sounded frazzled, as though he'd managed to outrun a hungry icypede only minutes before and were still in the process of catching his breath, which, on the whole, he did much more frequently than he locked doors in the tree house. "I'm really sorry, dude, I swear it! I didn't mean to hurt you. It's just… not the best time for me right now."

"Not the best time? Well, why not?" said Jake, scratching at the door. He couldn't help himself. Instinct. "Look out the window, man! The sun is singing, the birds are shining, and the fungal growths are making really funny sounds in the hollow logs. Seriously, how can it _not_ be the best time right now?"

"It just isn't, okay?" Finn said. "You gotta give me a little time."

"…fine," Jake said sourly, kicking a nearby dust bunny. "How much time do you need?"

"I don't know. An hour."

Jake's eyebrows almost leapt into orbit. "_An hour?_ That's practically the whole day!" he cried. "C'mon, Finn, what could you possibly be doing in there that's so important?"

He tried forcing the door again, but, again, Finn forced it right back into place. "Look, I'm having some… problems, okay?" he said. "Human boy problems. Really gross stuff. You wouldn't want to come in anyway."

Jake thought about it for a minute. "Human boy problems?" he asked, quizzical. "What kind of problems does a twelve year-old human boy have?"

"We… uh… we, uh… we bleed from the butt!"

"Whoa, are you kidding? Get out of town!" Jake exclaimed, incredulous. His eyes, already as big as dinner plates, bulged from their sockets until they the size of beach balls. "Dude, you've gotta let me come in and see this!"

There was a really long second of really awkward silence. "Are you nuts? What's wrong with you, man?"

"Come on, Finn," Jake said, jiggling the knob some more. "You've gotta let me satiate my scientific curiosity."

_Finn, it's cool. We can re-schedule. I had some stuff to do today, anyway._

"No!" Finn shouted, though Jake was pretty certain he wasn't talking to him. "I'll take care of this, I promise! Please don't go…"

"Huh? What was that?" Jake asked.

"What was what, dude?" said Finn.

"Don't you play the fool with me, Finn; I definitely heard something with my advanced canine hearing."

"That's funny. It must have been that imagination of yours."

"Oh, no, you don't!"

Finn shouldered the door with all his strength, but this time it was futile; Jake, flat as a pancake and mushy as raw dough, squeezed himself through the crack under the door. Like the Blob. He got to his feet and looked around, but there wasn't much to see. Only Finn, sitting in the middle of a totally dark room.

"I don't see any blood," Jake said, just a little disappointed.

"Um…"

"And why'd you close all the curtains? We gotta get some sunlight up in here, man," he went on, more disappointed still. He started to walk toward the window, but he hadn't taken so much as a single step when Finn lunged at him and held him by the shoulder, as tightly as he could with such a little hand.

"No! You can't!"

"Why not? All this darkness is getting me down."

"Don't do it, man! No sunlight! It's important!"

Jake stomped his foot, crossed his arms, and frowned. "Listen up, Finn," he said in his huffy, parental, authoritarian tone. "I'm not moving an inch from this spot until you tell me exactly what's going on. Oh, and no more of this 'bleeding from the butt' funny business. It's clearly nothing half as awesome as that."

Finn sighed sadly. "Okay, Jake, you got me. Do you really want to know what's going on? Do you really, really want to know?"

"Of course, man."

Finn looked around, apparently to make sure no one else was listening. "All right, dude, listen carefully. You're the only one who can know."

Jake nearly twitched with anticipation.

"The truth is… I'm going through my Goth-slash-emo phase."

For a moment, the clock on the wall ticked uninterrupted.

"Huh?" said Jake, tilting his head to the side in confusion. "What's that?"

"Oh, you know," Finn said with a nonchalant shrug. "It's something humans my age go through. We wear a lot of black makeup, listen to really loud music about blood and death and stuff, and stab our own faces with sharp metal thingies."

Jake rubbed his chin. "I don't know, man. That doesn't sound like you at all."

"Sure it does. Look, I'll prove it to you," Finn said, waving his arms around like limp, skinny noodles. He cleared his throat. "Oh, woe is me, life sucks so hard," he cried. "Nothing is math, there's no Cosmic Owl, and Alex DeLarge is on my online display image."

He started to gently nudge Jake out of the living room, still in the midst of his virtuoso performance. "Now, go," he went on. "Go. Leave me to my misery, or so help me, I'll go to a Halloween party dressed like the Crow."

"Okay, okay, man. Jeez," Jake said ill-humoredly as he stumbled into the hall. He heard the door shut and lock behind him.

Finn, meanwhile, leaned back against the door and wiped the sweat off his forehead.

"Is he gone?"

"Yeah… yeah, I think so," Finn said.

"Awesome. Can you let me out, please?"

"You got it!"

Finn took off his knapsack and undid the straps. Immediately, a big black bat fluttered out of it and made its way to the corner of the room, where it hung around for a moment or two before shifting its shape in a puff of black smoke. Marceline, for of course it was she, floated near the ceiling, looking more than a little fatigued.

"Sorry about that," Finn said, sympathetic. "You know Jake, he sure does love hunting for treasure. Anyway, how about that new song you wanted to show me? I'm all ears, baby."

Marceline harrumphed and blew a lock of slick black hair away from her eyes. "I'm not in the mood for music anymore, Finn," she said.

Finn's expression soured. "Huh? How come?"

"You really don't know, do you?" said Marceline. She chuckled the sort of chuckle that makes little boys question, in the back of their minds, if they're being patronized. "I swear, you really are clueless sometimes. You totally fail at girls."

"Ghwuhh?" said Finn, summing up his confusion as pithily as possible. "What's wrong, Marceline? I thought we were rocking out and having fun."

"One does not simply 'rock out' like that, Finn," Marceline explained, inserting finger quotes where appropriate. "You need patience. Inspiration. You gotta be in the zone, y'know? And I can't get in the zone if your dog won't stop sniffing around, interrupting our alone time."

Finn frowned. "Hey, don't talk about Jake like that! He's not my dog, he's my friend!"

"I'm your friend, too, aren't I?"

"What? Of course! I…"

"So why do we always have to schedule our get-togethers around him? Any time I want to hang out and do stuff with you, you push me aside to go on an adventure or something stupid like that. It's always, 'Oh, sorry, Marceline, Jake and I are going to go save a princess. Sorry, Marceline, Jake and I are going to go fight a monster. Sorry, Marceline, if you hold my head underwater for three hours I will die.' It's _very_ uncool, dude."

Finn had begun to sweat. There were a million and one sticky wickets in the Land of Ooo, both literal and figurative, he could effortlessly scurry his way out of, but this, as it turns out, wasn't one of them. "Look, I'm sorry," he said, his head hanging low. "I don't mean to neglect you like that. It's Jake, you know? He needs an awful lot of attention. If you leave him alone for too long, he goes into full freak-out mode, and… well, that's just not the kind of thing you want to be exposed to."

"Uh-huh."

Marceline was getting ready to leave. She opened her umbrella, a gnarled, blasphemous-looking affair expertly crafted by the ghouls of the Night-O-Sphere for maximum protection from the sun, and began to drift out the window. She didn't get very far before finding herself anchored to the room, though; Finn was clinging to her ankle and showed no signs of letting go.

"Ugh! Finn! What are you doing?" she cried.

"I'm coming with you!" Finn said, more heroically than anyone hanging from someone else's ankle had any right to. "Please, you've gotta let me show you that I _can_ have epic fun times with you. Give me another chance, okay? It's gonna be totally math, I promise!"

Marceline sighed. "Well, okay… but you have to do everything I say!"

"You have my word, milady."

"That's more like it," said the vampire queen. "First order of business: get off my ankle. Like, right the hell now."

Finn happily obliged. "Now what?"

"Hmm." Marceline rubbed her chin musingly. "Do you own a cardboard box? It needs to be big, like, for a fridge or something."

"Do I ever!"

Marceline, all traces of resentment gone from her being, cackled delightedly over steepled fingers. "Awesome! Go fetch it for me, will you? I'm going to show you how to _really_ have a good time!"

No more than a minute later, Marceline streaked across the sky, holding Finn with one arm and the cardboard box with the other. Together, they made their way to the far north...

_To be continued..._


	3. Rocking on the Ice

**Author's Note:** I thought the second chapter was a little weak. Hopefully, this one will be better. Enjoy!

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3. Rocking on the Ice

A penguin patrolman waddled his way through hundreds of yards of ice and snow, his harpoon tucked firmly beneath his flipper. It had been a boring day; ordinarily, at least one princess would have had to be escorted, kicking and screaming, to His Majesty's spike-studded bachelor pad, but now it was nearly lunchtime and there hadn't been so much as a china doll or an inanimate glob of suspicious green slime with a crown on it to drag into the palace. His Majesty wasn't picky. Come to think of it, excitement around here had been on the decline since the Ice King had finally decided to go through with that crazy pipe dream of his, the so-called construction project.

The penguins hadn't been happy about that. It wasn't only because they weren't getting paid to work on it. They didn't usually get a salary, but then again, most of them were never expected to do anything more demanding than to stand around, looking as menacing as a penguin could. No, this construction project posed several serious health risks, and the Ice King wasn't known to be generous with his insurance benefits. He did offer dental, but penguins don't have teeth.

That there hadn't been an avalanche in all this time was nothing short of a miracle. To be fair, that had been a matter of some concern before work had begun. "Make it big!" the Ice King had said to his penguin hordes, hopping from foot to foot like a lunatic behind his icy podium. "Make it cool! Make it loud… but keep it quiet!"

Most of his hench-birds had been hard at work since then, drilling into the sides of the mountain, replacing ice and rock with bits of metal and electrical wiring. It was high-quality, extra large tech, "borrowed" in the dead of the night from the Robot Kingdom to the east. The penguins waddled on huge metal girders that stuck out at either side of the peak, hammering, drilling, and picking… quietly.

What a sight, the patrolman thought; surely this would be the greatest set of speakers in the history of rock.

The raw mackerel in his knapsack started to smell terribly ripe, very appetizing. The penguin looked at his shadow; it was small, but still there. Not noontime yet. Ugh. Technically, he shouldn't sit down to lunch until his shift was finished, but, what the hell. His belly was growling, and His Majesty should have been happy he still had any loyal disciples left at all. Most penguins had already joined some form of labor union, or quit their jobs outright to pursue their dream of working as fancy waiters. All penguins secretly dream of working as fancy waiters. Ask an ornithologist.

Before he could take a single bite off his fish, he heard some rustling in the cave behind him. It was a big hole on the side of the mountain; a penguin would be foolish to face away from it while sitting down for a meal. Suddenly remembering his basic training at penguin boot camp, he leapt to his feet and readied his harpoon, aiming at whatever may have been lurking behind him. "Squawk, squawk!" he shouted.

There was definitely something hiding in the cave; the penguin could see a black, formless shadow drifting uneasily from side to side. He stepped forward and stabbed the air with his harpoon, shouting "Squawk, squawk, squawk," which in penguinese translates as "Enough with the silly stage show, either lunge at me or don't!"

He shouldn't have done that. Starting then, until the end of his life, the penguin would occasionally sit bolt upright in the middle of the night, drenched in cold sweat and muttering "Squeak… _squeak!"_ (meaning "The teeth… _the teeth!"_) under his breath.

* * *

Once the little nuisance had run out of earshot, Marceline, standing at the mouth of the cave, dusted her hands and let her face rearrange itself into the usual collection of features. She spun on her heel and winked at Finn. "That should keep him out of our hair, don't you think?" she said.

"Uh-huh," replied Finn.

He wasn't feeling so hot, and not just because of the sub-zero temperature. He was squatting in a corner behind some rocks, hugging his knees and trying not to cry.

"Hey, what's the matter, little guy?" Marceline asked. "You're not still sad about dropping the box, are you?"

"I'm sorry, Marceline," Finn said through a mouthful of bitterness. "If I hadn't been such a klutz, we wouldn't have lost so much time."

Marceline punched him lightly on the arm. "Don't beat yourself up about it. It's not like we couldn't get it back," she said, pointing to the cardboard box. It was a little bit flimsier and more beat-up than it had been in the morning, but it would still fit nicely into her plan. "Besides, if we hadn't killed a little time before coming here, we would have had to wait in this boring cave even longer. It should be dusk pretty soon."

The sun had begun to sink beneath the horizon. Before too long, Marceline would be able to go outside without fear of burning her skin.

She hunkered down and hung the box over herself, like a shell for a hermit crab. Grinning, she peeked out from under it and called Finn with her finger. "All right, Finn, time to put our plan into action," she said. "Come hide under the box with me."

Finn leapt as though someone had stabbed him in the rear, his cheeks flooding with color. "Huh?" he exclaimed. "You want me to squeeze into that teeny-tiny space… with you?"

"That's the idea," said Marceline. "You got a problem with that?"

"Of course not!" said Finn, perhaps a little too readily, the sweat on his forehead freezing on the spot.

"Good. On your feet, then. The darker it gets, the harder it'll be to see through the blizzard."

In their mobile cardboard fort, Finn and Marceline rounded the corner to the Ice King's palace. Before any guard penguins had the chance to notice, Marceline stuck her arm out and rung the doorbell.

The huge double doors slammed open, causing spidery cracks in the ice. "Who _dares?_ Zap, zap, zap, zap, zap, zap!" the Ice King shouted as he shot six rounds of icy lightning at anything that might have been standing outside his palace. Fortunately, since our heroes were so close to the ground, none of them managed to connect. "I'm hard at work and in a mean mood right now, so, for your own sake, this better be important!"

Then the Ice King noticed the cardboard box. He picked it up, shook it by his ear (an uncomfortable moment for Finn and Marceline), and then grinned broadly. "Oh, goody, it's finally here!" he said. "My mail-order slide trombone! Now that I have this, nothing will ever be able to stop me!"

He turned around and carried the box into his palace, shutting the door behind him.

"Looky here, boys!" he said, holding the box aloft for his penguin hordes to see. "The final piece of the puzzle! As soon as you slackers are all finished building the speakers, there won't be a princess 'out of my league' in the whole wide world!"

A couple of the penguins clapped, just to be polite.

"Hey Marceline, what's he talking about?" Finn said into his friend's ear, not because he was trying to be discreet or anything; their faces were just squished together like that in the box.

"A fiendish scheme, Finn," Marceline replied, herself no stranger to fiendish schemes. "I heard about it the other night while I was out breaking people's windows. For some reason, he figures that if he plays his love song loudly enough for all princesses in the Land of Ooo to hear, they'll all come rushing in to be his bride. He's kind of loony like that."

"No kidding!" said Finn. "It wouldn't work, would it?"

"Pfft, of course not. But we aren't going to let him find out for himself, are we?" she added with a wink.

"Heck no, dude!"

"Cool. On the count of three, we burst out and smash him."

"Baby, you're talking my language!"

Marceline grinned. "One… two…"

"_Yaaargh! Adventure time!_"

Finn and Marceline jumped out of the box, battle cries at full volume. Finn flailed around in the air for a bit and managed to knock the Ice King off his feet with a low sweep kick. Then, Marceline shoved her boot hard into the Ice King's stomach, sending him sliding into the opposite wall. The ice creaked alarmingly, a zigzagging fissure shooting up from the spot where the King's crown stuck into the wall like a fork in butter all the way up to the ceiling.

The King sat up and rubbed his aching dome. "Well, don't just _stand_ there, you fools, _do_ something!" he shouted at his penguins, having heard the line in a movie the other night and eager to try it out.

The penguins looked at each other confusedly for a moment, then lunged _en masse_ at the two intruders. Our heroes tried to hold them off, and although they did manage to smack a few of them around, there were just too many. After a fight that was not nearly as long or as exciting as Finn had hoped for, he and his friend were both brought before the Ice King, their hands clasped behind their backs.

"Finn!" barked a red-faced Ice King. "You just won't stop sticking your nose in other people's beeswax, will you, boy? I should have known you'd show up sooner or later to ruin my fun. But you," he added, moving on to Marceline, "I don't think I've ever seen your face around here before. You wouldn't happen to be some new kind of princess, would you?"

The Ice King wiped his face with his sleeve; as it turns out, Marceline was pretty good at spitting.

"My name is Marceline the vampire queen, you fat rube!" said she. "And as soon as I'm out of this popsicle stand, I'm going to melt your whole palace into a big, ugly puddle. Just you wait!"

The King stroked his bushy beard, pensive. "A _queen_, you say? That's like a princess… but even better!" he said. He turned to a penguin that happened to be waddling by and pointed at him with his finger. "You there!"

"Caw?" said the penguin, poking himself in the chest with his flipper.

"Yes, you!" the Ice King replied. "Escort our lovely new friend to the special guest bedroom, won't you? And have her fitted for a wedding dress, too; maybe something with big icy spikes jutting out of her shoulders or something."

The penguin frowned at his monarch. "Caw, caw, caw?" he asked.

The Ice King threw his arms up in the air. "Never mind the speakers, Conrad!" he said. "Can't you see the Cosmic Owl has finally smiled on me? Now, get cracking on that wedding dress. Make it colorful. It's gonna take an awful lot to liven up _this_ complexion!"

Conrad sighed and, begrudgingly, saluted. He and some other penguin guards carried Marceline away.

"You'll never get away with this, Ice King!" cried Finn.

"On the contrary, I already have!" said the King, who'd really benefitted from watching that movie.

Another penguin tugged on the King's robe. "Caw, squawk, squeak?" he said.

"Oh, him?" said the Ice King, glancing offhandedly at Finn. "I'm not sure. Throw him in the dungeons or something. Oh, but don't hurt a hair on his head, okay? If I'm getting married, I'm going to need a best man!"

"Squork," said the penguin ("Gotcha" in penguinese), and carried Finn away.

_To be continued…_


	4. Marceline's Kck Kck Wedding Armor

**Author's Note:** Sorry about the delay, it's been crazy busy over here. I hope I can get the next one up faster, but it'll probably be a lot shorter. Things will be back to normal in a week or two, hopefully.

Thanks for all your feedback so far. You guys rock out loud. Keep it coming!

* * *

4. Marceline's Kck Kck Wedding Armor

There was only one person lying on the bed in the Ice King's matrimonial chamber (as usual), but this time, it wasn't the King himself. Marceline lay on her back, cuffed hands on her stomach, staring at the ceiling with a sly grin on her face and a nasty, nasty little plan turning gears in her mind. She didn't mind that the bed was hard, cold and, well, made of ice, partly because one thousand years of un-death had numbed most of her nerve endings but mostly because she didn't let any little thing like encroaching frostbite get in the way of some sweet, well thought-out payback.

"Look, my little devil, no matter what happens to you out there, no one can rob you of your wits. If you're quick enough and crafty enough, they'll get you out of any jam," her father had told her one day, nine hundred years before, as they picnicked together and watched the damned squirming in the fires of the Night-O-Sphere. "Well, unless they suck your brain out or something, but that's only like a fifty-fifty chance. Now, gimme those French fries. I'll keep them safe for you."

As much as it pained her to admit it, Marceline had taken her old man's lesson to heart, and for centuries on end she'd lied, tricked, and connived her way through a life of excess and degeneracy most high-ranking demon lords could only dream of. She'd managed to weasel her way out of much stickier wickets than this, and without nearly as much effort. She chuckled softly. Tonight would be a cakewalk, and a hoot to boot.

The door slid open and a pair of seriously annoyed penguin seamstresses waddled in, struggling to carry a full-body mannequin into the room. On the mannequin was Marceline's wedding dress, fresh from what must have been its hundredth re-design and much, much weightier than the Ice King had planned when he scribbled it in crayon so the seamstresses would have something to jump off of.

"I hope that lunatic likes it this time," one of them said to the other (for purposes of convenience, all Penguinese will be translated into English for the duration of this chapter). "If she makes me sew one more spike or armored plate onto this thing, my flippers are gonna fall off!"

"You said it, Edna. I'm sick and tired of lugging this thing around. I think my back is about to come out!" said the other, huffing and puffing. "You gotta wonder how that little beanpole will even move in it. Can His Glorious Majesty even _lift_ this thing? If this bruises his self-esteem, he'll keep us up all night with his bawling again, I just know it."

It had been like that all night. When the seamstresses introduced the original wedding dress, Marceline had hopped off the bed, paced around the mannequin a little, and rubbed her chin, possibly pensively. "I'm not so sure about this," she would say, squinting really hard. "It's just not me, you know? I'm not feeling it. This needs a little spark, a little something. Maybe if you guys added, oh, I dunno, big spike-studded shoulder pads or something, it'd be more my style. Oh, and put a nice, solid breastplate on it, too, won't you? Something that can take a few hits and still keep its shape."

The penguins looked at each other, shrugged in a "Well, whatever floats your boat" sort of way, and rolled the mannequin out of the room, ready to work on the adjustments. That was the first time. They'd been in and out of the room countless times since then, greeted each time by a vaguely irritated Marceline who demanded more and more changes. A sturdier helmet, better back support, a good mace attached to the forearm, if possible… the poor penguins had been at it all night.

"Hey! What did I tell you about knocking?" Marceline growled.

"Why, the ungrateful little…" said the penguin who wasn't Edna, named Mabel.

Before she could finish her sentence, Edna quickly reminded her that Marceline was in fact much bigger than both of them combined, and that she should probably stay quiet and hope this was the last time they'd need to put up with the petulant vampire that night. "Steady, girl! Remember, the sooner we can get her to accept the darned dress, the sooner we can grab some shut-eye!" she said.

Mabel had a deep breath, counted to eight (that's as high as penguins can count), and forced a smile.

Meanwhile, Marceline stood up to inspect the wedding dress again. She tugged on the chain mail, looked at her reflection on the polished metal, and tapped it softly with her knuckle, producing a dull _clang_. "Hmm," she said.

"Dear Cosmic Owl, she hates it," Mabel mumbled grumpily. "I knew it. Here we go, another round of adjustments."

"Shush!" said Edna, jabbing her softly in her penguiny ribcage.

Marceline stood inertly for what seemed like an eternity. Then, she started nodding slowly, and finally, she spun on her heel. There was a great big smile on her face, much to the seamstresses' surprise. "I love it!" she declared.

"Oh, gracious!" said Mabel, nearly collapsing on the spot.

The vampire rubbed her hands together, which was pretty much all she could do with them at this point. "Yup, this is exactly what I want to get married in. Really hardcore death metal, just the way I like it. Let me try it on," she said.

Edna and Mabel nodded in unison and attempted to pull the dress off the mannequin, without much success.

Marceline choked back a giggle. In a minute's time, she'd be free.

"Careful, careful, you're going to topple it!" she said, steadying the mannequin with her bound hands. "Look, I'm a big girl, all right? I can totally dress myself… I'll just need you to help me out of my handcuffs, first."

The penguins exchanged untrusting glances.

"What do you think, Edna? Sounds a whole lot like a trick to me," said Mabel.

Edna shrugged. "Probably, yeah," she said. "But, you know what? That's some other penguin's problem. If she puts on the dress, our work is finished. Go ahead and take off the cuffs, it's way past our bedtime and I for one could use a few winks."

"Gotcha."

Mabel dug around her knapsack for the key, successfully procuring it shortly thereafter. With that business taken care of, Marceline smiled and rubbed her wrists, because that's what people do after having their handcuffs taken off.

"Dynamite," she said, turning to the mannequin and the dress thereon. "Thank you, ladies. Just one more question before I try out my new threads. How well do you think this puppy would do against a thousand-strong penguin infantry? One armed with harpoons, for example?"

Mabel and Edna looked at one another.

"A thousand?" said Mabel. "How much is that?"

"I think it's, like, eight, but a bunch of times," said Edna.

"A bunch of times? Wow, that _is_ a lot."

"I don't think even a dress as kck kck as that one could hold its own against so many brave penguins," Edna added, rubbing the bottom of her beak.

"What a pity. The King's bride-to-be won't like that at all."

"Well, we're not going to tell her _that_, are we?"

Mabel grinned widely. "Oh, I do love it when you get crafty."

Edna turned to Marceline and put on her serious face. "Your dress can absolutely, positively withstand a thousand penguin-borne harpoons. Maybe even more," she said.

Marceline stared at her blankly. "Yeah, I didn't catch a word of that," she said. Her penguinese had gotten a little rusty following a few centuries of disuse. "How about this. Two squeaks for yea, one squeak for nay."

"Your dress can absolutely, positively withstand a thousand penguin-borne harpoons. Your dress can absolutely, positively withstand a thousand penguin-borne harpoons."

"Ah! That's useful information," said Marceline, already sliding into her dress. She didn't put on the spike-studded wristbands because her wrists were still sore from all that handcuff business earlier, but given that she was now shielded by a couple dozen pounds of solid, metallic armor, she thought she could afford the small negligence.

She floated to the closet (it took a little effort this time, what with all the extra weight) and hunted for her bass guitar and umbrella in a jungle of identical blue robes. She found them, strapped them both to her belt, and turned back to the seamstresses. "I'm off to see my future hubby now," she told them. "You guys have been a ton of fun. Go ahead and get out of the palace while you still can, why don't you? I'm about to rock the house and it would be a shame if you two got caught in the debris."

She winked, blew them a kiss, and drifted out of the room. _Don't worry, Finn... I'm on my way..._

Mabel shook her head. "They say it's bad luck if the groom sees the bride in her dress before the wedding," she said.

"Good!" Edna replied, throwing her flippers in the air. "After all she's put us through, that little brat has it coming!"

_To be continued..._


	5. Jake vs Marceline

5. Jake vs. Marceline: Drama Bomb!

In the halls of the Ice King's palace, a commotion was taking place. Finn could tell because, even down here in the dungeons, the walls were tilting back and forth like a wobbly house of cards, and every now and then a giant icy death-sicle would dislodge itself from the ceiling and slam against the ground, meaning that Finn couldn't sulk in any one place for too long without fear of impalement. He made up by sulking _extra_ hard when he could, rolling up into a little ball as tears rolled down his cheeks and froze there.

"No, no… heroes do _not_ cry," he told himself halfheartedly, sitting up and looking around for something to be brave about. "Heroes stand up and _do_ something, man! They save righteous ladies in need of saving. And right now there's a totally righteous lady up there who needs my help!" He ran up to the bars in his cell, gripped them in his tiny fists, and started to rattle them as hard as he could. "Let me out!" he shouted. "I have to go do hero stuff! If you don't come down here and open this door right now, you're gonna be so sorry!"

The ice bars remained firmly in place.

"Ugh!" said Finn. He kicked one of the thousands of icy shards that lay scattered about the room and fell limply on his bottom, discouraged.

"Hey! Would you, like, keep it _down_ over there? Some of us need our beauty sleep. Gosh!" said someone way in the back.

Finn leapt to his feet, knees apart and fists in the air. "Huh? Who said that? Show yourself!" he cried.

"Gosh. Don't, like, have a conniption, Finn. It's just me. Gosh." A ball of purple fluff floated into sight from the darkest corner of the dungeon, frowning.

"Lumpy Space Princess! Did the Ice King get _you,_ too?" said Finn.

"Pfft, of _course_ not," Lumpy Space Princess said indignantly. She rolled her eyes and waggled her wrist at him. "I came in here all by myself. Duh."

"Huh? But, why!" Finn cried. He lunged forward, grabbed Lumpy by her upper arms, and leaned in real close because he wanted to make sure she got his point. "You have to get out of here, LSP! The Ice King is one bad dude; he kidnaps princesses from all over the world and tries to force them to marry him and junk. Come on, if we push extra hard I'm sure we can get those ice bars to budge."

Lumpy Space Princess wrested her arm away. "What the lump? I don't want to be out there, Finn, I want to be in here!"

Finn stared at her blankly for a moment, like this: (o _ o), but then the corners of his mouth started to wiggle upward and he let out a half-choked giggle. "Why, Lumpy Space Princess, I didn't know you were into old smelly dudes!" he said, playfully poking her in the ribcage, or at least where he thought her ribcage might be. It was hard to tell with a Lumpy Space person.

Lumpy scoffed disgustedly. "Ugh, gag me with a spoon," she said. "I'm just, like, sick and tired of those lumping penguins forgetting to pick me up all the lumping time. They're always out there kidnapping princesses for the Ice King and, like, whatever, but they _always_ forget to take _me!_ I'm all, like, _gosh!_ So I actually had to, like, come all the way up here on my own. You dig?"

"Um, I'm sorry to break this out to you, Princess," Finn said, rubbing the back of his head and staring at his feet, "but I don't think the Ice King likes you all that much."

"WHAT?" Lumpy shouted, her eyes nearly leaping into the stratosphere. "What the lump, Finn? I mean, _what the lump?_ Why _wouldn't_ the Ice King want to get his hands on this smoking hot boddeh?" She placed her fingertips at the base of what we'll generously call her neck and slowly slid them downward to demonstrate. Finn averted his eyes, uncomfortable. "You're dreaming, guy. You're dreaming."

Finn shrugged weakly. "Sorry," he said. "You're wasting your time, anyway. The Ice King is up there right now, about to get hitched to Marceline the vampire queen."

Lumpy growled alarmingly. She slammed her fist into her palm while a lumpy vein throbbed on her forehead. "Ooh, that bitch!" she said. "What's she, like, _like,_ Finn? Does she have, like, bigger lumps than me? 'Cause I have way more monneh. I have the best car and a winning personality. Gosh!"

"Hey! Don't talk about Marceline like that! She's my _friend!"_ Finn said. "She's way cool! She's _smart,_ she's _funny…"_ (and here he began to count off each quality on his fingers, rather violently actually) "…she's math at rocking out on guitar, and she has a really pretty singing voice and an infectious laugh and she rules at video games and smells like tomb rot and tells the dirtiest jokes and can recite the entire alphabet in a single belch and, and, and, and…!"

Finn saw Lumpy smile in a positively horrible way. Only then did he notice the sweat crystallizing into tiny snowflakes on his forehead, or the fact that his cheeks felt peculiarly warm. "What? No!" he screeched, his face a bright crimson. "Marceline and I are friends, just friends!"

Now Lumpy poked Finn in the ribcage, winking. _"Suuuure_ you are, _buddeh."_

"Look, that doesn't matter, okay?" said a flustered Finn. "What matters now is that neither of us wants the Ice King to get with Marceline, so we gotta figure out a way out of here… and _rescue her!"_

Right at that moment, there was a loud slamming sound; the door at the top of the dungeon's spiral staircase hung by one of its hinges, bathing the place in warm yellow light. Marceline, still clad in her wedding armor (although, by this point, it was all crooked and bent out of shape, with harpoons sticking out at unseemly angles here and there), floated onto the bottom floor. Her hair was a tangled mess and she had some dark gray bruises on her arms and face, but in her eyes there was steely determination… and just the slightest touch of mirth. She held her axe high above her head and smiled.

"Finn!" she cried. "I'm here to rescue you!"

"Aw, no way," Finn said. "You're here just in time. Another minute and I would've totally rescued you!"

Marceline cackled and mussed up Finn's hair. "Of course you were, sport. But we're a little pressed for time right now, yeah? The Ice King's penguins frighten easily, but they'll be back… and in greater numbers. Stand back!" She swung her axe-slash-guitar backwards to gather momentum, then brought it crashing into the bars of Finn's cell. They shattered into specks of icy confetti, and within seconds Finn had leapt into the air and hugged Marceline as tightly as his skinny little limbs would allow.

"I should've known they couldn't hold you!" he enthused.

Lumpy Space Princess floated out of the cell and eyed Marceline judgmentally. "Pfft, she's not all _that,"_ she said. "I mean, come _on,_ have you _seen_ anything less lumpy? It's called _food,_ sweetheart! You should, like, _try it_ sometime!"

Marceline put Finn down and raised a quizzical eyebrow at Lumpy. "Who's _this_ guy?" she asked Finn.

If Lumpy Space Princess had any nostrils, they would have flared indignantly at that point. "OOH!" she huffed. "What's, like, your _damage,_ missy? I'm not a _guy,_ I'm the Lumpy Space Princess! Y'know, the princess of Lumpy Space? Gosh!"

A sympathetic smile crept into Marceline's face. "Ohhh, okay," she said. "Rock on, girlfriend! You're whatever you wanna be!"

"What? No!" Lumpy cried in her deep, mannish voice. "I really am, like, a _girl!"_

_"That's_ the spirit! And don't you let anyone tell you any different," said Marceline. "Anyway, we've gotta run or we'll be up to our necks in penguin. All ready to blow this pop stand, Finn?"

"Am I!"

"All right, here… we… _gooooo!"_

With Finn on her back, Marceline rocketed to the top of the dungeons and swooped smoothly out the door, her hair trailing behind her like a wake of black fire. They spiraled to ground floor, sailed over a sea of confused penguin stares, and made it out of the palace in a matter of minutes… or so they _would,_ if it hadn't been for the rubbery yellow blob that had suddenly appeared between them and the exit like a vertical trampoline. Finn and Marceline bounced off it and landed painfully on the floor, only a short distance away from the now-ineffectual holding cell, sending the shards of ice a-bounce.

"Get away from my friend, you monster!" the rubbery yellow blob shouted. Only it wasn't a rubbery yellow blob anymore. Now it was a rubbery yellow dog.

Jake landed with a _thump_ on Marceline's torso and started battering away at her face with his tiny doggie fists. _Whap, whap, whap!_ He did, at least, until Marceline, hissing like a pressure cooker, sprung to her feet, pried Jake off herself and sent him sailing into the opposite wall with a single sweeping motion. There was a resonant c_rash_ as Jake and the wall became close acquaintances. The little dog stuck to the wall like a discarded gob of Silly Putty, then dropped down onto the floor again with a sickening _splat!_

"You gonna try that again, little man?" said Marceline, gripping her axe handle a little more tightly.

Jake struggled to stand upright again. "'Course!" he said, putting his dukes up as he teetered weakly to and fro, disoriented. "'Cause thaz wut advent'rin' buddies _do,_ y'know? We kick butt fer itch udder! C'mere, Imma knock yer lights out…"

He leapt at Marceline, who, coincidentally, was springing toward _him_ at that very moment. They would have connected, too, if it hadn't been for Finn and Lumpy, who swiftly intervened. Finn held Marceline back from Jake, and Lumpy stopped Jake from getting at Marceline. "All right, you two, that's enough!" said Finn, doing all he could to restrain his vampire friend, which, truth be told, wasn't much at all. "What y'all are doing is _not_ cool!"

"Like, _yeah!"_ agreed Lumpy. "Nobody gets to beat up vampire face here except me! Gosh!"

It took a little effort, but finally Finn and Lumpy managed to get Jake and Marceline to stand in the same room amidst a thinly-veiled caricature of civility. Marceline leered at Jake. "You got lucky this time, fleabag," she muttered, spitting thin, grayish blood out the corner of her mouth. Jake dismissed the threat with a not-entirely-courteous hand gesture, which he retracted soon enough when he looked her way and noticed that her face had transformed into that nightmare thing that had kept his brother Germaine from wanting to sleep in the bottom bunk for months when they were puppies. It was only there for a second, but that was nearly enough to make Jake sing his scream song.

"W-what's the _deal,_ b-bro?" he said to Finn, making a valiant effort to disguise his whimpering as a series of manly grunts. He was also making puppy dog eyes, but _that_ he couldn't help. "I s-saw Marceline fly off with you this m-morning! I'm here to r-rescue you, d-dude!"

"Fly off with me…?" Finn said, and then slapped himself hard on the forehead. "Dude, she wasn't, like, _abducting_ me or anything! We only wanted to hang out."

"H-hang out?" said Jake, tentatively.

"Yeah, man, hang out. We were having fun. Together."

"But, but, but…" the little dog muttered. _"We_ were supposed to hang out! _We_ were supposed to have fun, together! I had a map and everything!"

Marceline stared absently at her nails. "Aw, little baby gonna cry, now?"

"You're not helping, honey," said Finn; Marceline replied by blowing a lock of slick black hair off her eyes, disgruntled. He then turned back to Jake. "Don't be sad, Jake; we _are_ going to spend time together! Just… not… right… now, okay? I made plans with Marceline. Besides, we go on adventures _every_ day, dude. We can skip one now and then."

Jake gasped, horrified, his hands flying to his mouth and staying there. "How can you even _say_ that, dude?" he asked, the words barely squeezing by his fingers. "Adventuring is _our_ thing… making plans is what _we_ do…"

"We, like, heard you the first time!" said Lumpy, practicing her usual degree of tactfulness.

"I'm sorry, Jake," said Finn, shrugging weakly. "We'll do some stuff later, I promise. Okay?"

Marceline floated between the boys and tapped them both softly on the head with her knuckles, although, it must be said, not _equally_ softly. "Yo, ladies," she said. "Can we _please_ reschedule the drama? I don't think you'll want to be here when the penguin reinforcements crash the party."

Indeed, if you listened closely, you could hear the waddle-waddle-waddle of dozens of little penguin feet, marching in unison toward the dungeons.

"Holy wow, she's right!" Finn exclaimed. "Come on, you guys, we need to get out of here on the double!"

"Oh, no, we don't! Not yet!" Jake cried bitterly.

Before the girls could do anything to stop him, Jake lifted Finn over his head and hurled him back into the holding cell. Finn collided with the back wall, fell forward, and rubbed his spine.

_"Jake!"_ Finn cried. "That really hurt! What the _heck_ do you think you're doing?"

The small yellow dog jumped into the holding cell and smiled broadly. "I'm rescuing you, of course!" he said. Jake scooped Finn up again, but this time he carried him swiftly back onto the outside and put him gently down on the floor. "There! See? I rescued you. I'm your hero, Finn! Woo-hoo! Jake, the big hero guy! Did you guys see that? Did _you_ see that?" He pointed a finger at Lumpy Space Princess, who scoffed and looked away.

Jake felt a sharp pain on the back of his skull. Closer inspection revealed the back of Marceline's hand was to blame. "Enough with the rescuing!" said she. "We have to get out of here, NOW!" She took to the air, grabbed Finn and Jake by their wrists, and took off at full speed. Jake managed to stretch out an arm and wrap it around Lumpy Space Princess, too, dragging her along for the ride in spite of her colorful complaints.

They ventured into the Ice Palace's labyrinthine halls.

* * *

"Way to go, _genius,"_ Lumpy said spitefully to Marceline, shooting a dirty glance her way. "I think we're, like, _totally lost!"_

"No. Shut up. Your face. We're not lost. I know exactly where we are," Marceline replied. Actually, they were in a large cylindrical room, several stories high, all slick and icy blue; it looked like the kind of place that could spontaneously generate a soothing xylophone melody every day at sundown to ease the kids into bed, not that there were any kids at the Ice King's palace, or that there ever would be, probably, other than Finn, but he didn't count. But there _was_ a xylophone set up all nicely on the stage, along with a drum set (with "#1 Babe" written on it for some reason) and an empty spot over on the left that looked like it could accommodate a slide trombone. The whole set was hooked up to a series of really thick cables that bore their way into the wall, into the very mountain.

"See? This is where the Ice King is planning to stage his little concert," Marceline continued, a light touch of disdain in her voice. "He probably hollowed out this place so his penguins could sit and watch. So I _do_ know where we are, thank you very much. Now I only need to figure out where we are _relative to the exit."_

"Pfft," said Lumpy Space Princess, unimpressed.

Finn wasn't much more enthusiastic. "Face it, Marceline, we're all in a jumble up in here. Do you think we should, I don't know, ask for directions?"

Marceline pinched the bridge of her nose. "Yeah, Finn. That's rich. Directions from _whom?"_ she said.

"How 'bout that guy?" said Jake, pointing casually to the Ice King, who happened to meander into the room at the time, struggling to wear a white dickey that insisted on rolling up and smacking him on the chin. He looked really weird out of his robe and in a tuxedo, actually, like a bearded blue blow pop. When he stumbled into Finn and the gang, he froze, no pun intended, and his features settled into their trademark scowl.

"What are you doing out of your holding cell, Finn? The wedding's not for another hour… or for as long as it takes me to get this _blasted whoozit_ to stay in place!" he added, pawing clumsily at the stubborn dickey. His gaze then fell on Marceline, all roughed up and fatigued, and he smiled a truly revolting smile. "Oh, goody!" he exclaimed. "You've been _practicing!"_

Marceline's snow white skin became snow whiter, and then blood red immediately afterward. If it hadn't been for the few extra hundred harpoon-toting penguin sentries that marched into the room through the series of rectangular doors that lined its circumference, she would have fed the King her axe. Our heroes huddled together in the center of the room; the penguins threatened to run them through with their weapons, Marceline's lunch threatened to come up, and, perhaps most worryingly of all, Jake threatened to lose bowel control.

Gunther, the head penguin, waddled to the forefront and emitted a combination of squeaks and squawks, meaning, "My lord! The vampire girl and her parasitic company are plotting an _insidious_ escape. She alone is responsible for a thousand and one boo-boos in the penguin infantry, maybe even more. It was horrible, my lord… Ellen in medical says we mightn't have enough band-aids to make it through the night!"

_"Wha-aaa-aaat!"_ The Ice King's eyebrows nearly jumped off his face. He walked forward. "Marceline, how _could_ you!" he said. "We were going to be so happy together! We were going to be husband and wife!"

"Don't _flatter_ yourself, you big nerd!"

Marceline paused for a moment, bemused. _Hmm,_ she thought, _not one of my better comebacks._ Only then did it come as something of a shock to her to realize she hadn't said anything at all; Finn had beat her to it and stood, red-faced and fuming, at the forefront of their little group, pointing an accusatory finger at the King. "You don't care about ladies _at all,_ do you? Why _else_ would it make a difference to you whether Marceline is a princess or a queen or just a regular radical dame, huh?" he barked. "You only care about your _own_ image! You only care about making _yourself_ look better! _That's_ why you don't have any friends, you know! You're a big… ugly… _selfish tool!"_

"Oh, SNAP!" said Lumpy Space Princess.

The Ice King looked genuinely taken aback, his lower lip blubbering ineffectually as it waited for a comeback that never came. His brain wobbled a tad, actually, trying to figure out whether to feel sadness or homicidal rage. Ever threatened by change, it made its familiar decision.

The King, fighting back a tear, pointed his finger at Finn in turn. _"Destroy_ them!" he barked. _"Destroy them all!_ And by 'destroy them' I mean _kill_ them! Run them through! Slice them to ribbons! Marceline broke my heart… _I want hers as a trophy on my wall!"_

His penguin hordes saluted and turned their attention to the group, Marceline in particular.

Penguins aren't known for their brisk walking pace, but there were hundreds upon hundreds of them pouring into the room, all either packing harpoons or in the process of acquiring one. There were more of them here than there had been in the main hall when Marceline and Finn first entered the palace, and _many_ more than Marceline had to deal with when she flew down to the dungeons. She saw her non-reflection in one of the blades and realized she had about three seconds, maybe four, to think of a plan and save Finn… and the others, too, if she had to. Her eyes darted about the place. Her brain kicked into overdrive.

And suddenly, a voice rang in her mind, silky smooth and utterly loathsome.

_Remember, my little devil… if you just keep your wits about you…_

Marceline's sight fell on the Ice King's band equipment; specifically, on the tiny snowflakes that were _themselves_ falling on the drum set, rattled from the ceiling and walls by hundreds of marching penguin feet. Come to think of it, this was a _really_ terrible place for a hollow ice cylinder… the construction was hazardous. A really good nudge would make the whole place fall apart.

There was a twinkle in her eye. That was dangerous.

She wrapped her arms around the other three and took off vertically as quickly as she could, leaving unoccupied a space that was filled a half-second later with the tips of a dozen harpoons. She put them all down on the stage before landing gently beside them. The penguin hordes turned tail to chase their target, but stopped, bouncing off one another like a row of feathery dominoes, when they realized Marceline had plugged her axe-guitar into the speakers. She turned the dial up to eleven; the air buzzed with power.

"Nobody move!" she cried. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small purple guitar pick, which she held high over her head so everyone could see it. "Or I'll treat you all to the cool new metal ballad I just wrote! It's called 'You're a Fat Worthless Idiot, I Hope You Die,' and I'd like to dedicate it to the Ice King!"

There was a collective gasp from the King and his hordes. "You _fool!_ This mountain can't withstand acoustics like _that!"_ cried the Ice King, breaking out into a _very_ cold sweat. "It can handle light jazz, sure, classic rock _maybe._ But… metal! You're mad! You'll cause an avalanche!"

Marceline beamed smugly. "That's the _point,_ brainiac! So, what's it gonna be? Let my friends go, or I'll bring the house down… literally!"

"You _wouldn't!"_

"I would!"

"You shan't!"

"Watch me!"

Her arm swept downward, pick at the ready.

("Um… Marceline?" Finn said, a little nervous. "I _really_ hope you know what you're…")

It struck a chord.

_To be continued…_

_

* * *

_

**Author's Note:** Woo! I'm sorry it took so long, I made this chapter extra long to make up for it. Spoiler alert... the next one has Princess Bubblegum. :)


	6. Da Soopah Seekrit Chapter

**Author's Note:** I actually started writing this chapter shortly after finishing chapter five, but then I decided I'd stop writing fan fiction and do something useful with my life. Well, that more or less failed to happen, so here's chapter six, freshly retrieved from my friend Carth's old computer (check out her stuff here on the site, by the way! It's way better than mine). This chapter ends the Ice King arc and gets cracking on something new, so I hope you'll like that.

Oh, and sorry, but no Princess Bubblegum this time. However, she _is_ in the _next_ chapter, which I've already uploaded, so no more waiting for you guys. Enjoy! :)

* * *

6. Da Soopah Seekrit Hitherto Unreleased Chapter, OMG!

The entire Land of Ooo heard the mountains' rumble.

Well, they were mountains only for a minute or two, once the rumbling started.

After all the commotion had finished, they were more like big piles of white fluff scattered about a hundred-mile radius, with mammoth shards of ice sticking out in spots like wafers in a vanilla sundae. For a moment, nothing stirred. Then, nothing stirred some more. After that, a skinny blue hand clawed its way out from under a ten-ton pile of frost, followed shortly thereafter by hundreds of black-and-white flippers.

The Ice King toppled dazedly onto his stomach, the world swimming around him. "Oh, my aching skull…" he began, taking a minute to find his head and then another to rub it thoroughly, hoping, largely in vain, to soothe the pain. Suddenly, he noticed there was nothing on it. Something There should have been something on it. "You there!" he cried, pointing a finger at the nearest penguin. "Fetch me that thing that usually goes on my head!"

The few remaining able-bodied penguins saluted and obliged, digging halfheartedly through the slush until one of them stubbed his toe on the pointy gold-looking thing the King asked for. He waddled over and squawked out the penguin equivalent of "This it?"

"Ah, yeah, my crown," the Ice King said happily, picking it up and holding it close, reveling in the familiarity. "I remember the day I stole this little beauty. So good, so good… ouch! Not so good, not so good!" He hurriedly took off the crown; it was still a bit too weighty for his aching head.

But that sudden sting of pain had an unexpected consequence. It unclogged one of the more beat-up blood vessels in his brain, and suddenly his short-term memory came flooding back in like a bath of hot turpentine.

"Oh!" He sprang to his feet and ran around chaotically, like a chicken with its head cut off, as they say. "We're under attack! Hold the fort, boys, hold the fort! Finn, Jake, and that _delectable_ little vampire girl couldn't have made their getaway yet. Quick! Stab the snow with your harpoons. Do it now!"

Only the brown-nosiest and most unmotivated penguins actually started stabbing the ground, albeit with differing degrees of enthusiasm. All the rest simply stared at one another, baffled. "Um, sir," said one of them, waddling up to the King, "the guys and I feel this is all wasted effort. The boy, the dog, and the loathsome wench are probably crushed beneath the snow. Casualties of war, you understand. No point in prolonging the effort."

The Ice King thought this over, stretching his shaggy beard. "Hmm," said he. "Yeah, you're probably right there, um… what's your name? You're probably right, _Philip._ Another lovely lady, slipped betwixt my fingers. Ugh." The King sighed and kicked a mound of slush, disheartened.

Philip looked back over his shoulder and saw the other penguins in his little clique, shrugging at him and egging him on. He sighed in turn and turned back to the Ice King. "Hey now chief, don't feel _too_ bad about it, yeah? I mean, that filthy seed of the Night-O-Sphere wouldn't have done you right, anyway," he said. "She _clearly_ only wanted you for your body, but someday, you'll find a perfectly lovely princess who'll be all into what you _really_ are, all right? _Inside."_

"And, and, and, and," penguin Benny piped in helpfully, "look at that _hair!_ I bet it's never seen so much as _one drop_ of conditioner!"

The Ice King gave a little sniffle and turned, slowly, toward his feathery friends. He squinted, doubtful. "Do you… do you really think that, fellas?"

Philip grinned painfully. "Oh, of _course_ we do," he said. "I mean, look at you. Classy gent, _royal,_ too, and with such stellar taste in blue robes, and, um, beard… ornaments. The ladies will come running, chief, it's only a matter of time. Be patient. And, like, stuff."

Slowly, steadily, a grin crept onto the King's grizzled visage, keeping pace with the delusion that was slowly retaking his brain. His eyes brightened. "They _will,_ won't they?" he said happily. He lunged at Philip and held him close, dancing and pirouetting about in his giddiness. "You penguins are my best friends in the whole wide world, you know that? You really have a way of turning this old king's frown all the way around!"

He danced and hopped and skipped some more, giggling incessantly, until finally his higher cognitive functions returned to him and he put Philip down on the ground; in a mild trauma, the little guy waddled back to his clique, who patted him on the back and held him firmly by the shoulder and told him what a brave, brave bird he was.

"Come on, guys and dolls! It's time to go!" said the King. "It's time to build a _new_ palace, on a new mountain! It's time to start afresh, and spread our message of joy and marriage…" (and here he spread his arm out and swung it in a wide arc, encompassing all of Ooo) _"…a whole new batch of princesses!"_

"That's the spirit, King!" cried the suck-ups among the penguins. The rest of them groaned with distaste. Another construction project meant another thousand unpaid hours of tireless toil.

And so the penguins waddled off into the distance, far away from where the original palace had stood, their leaping King leading the charge. By the time the sun had made its way into the sky, ushering in the morning, they whole lot of them were well on their way to Some Other Place.

Meanwhile, amidst the piles of whiteness, nothing stirred, again.

Then an arctic hare stirred, pausing to twitch its nose a bit before hurrying off to that place arctic hares hurry off to. Then nothing stirred.

Nothing stirred some more.

Then a rift in the space-time continuum happened, perfectly round and about three forearms' length in diameter, tearing the air itself as though it were the thin wallpaper that separates our world from the Dimension of Endless Horrors. A butterfly floated past it. This is totally irrelevant. Finn and Jake fell screaming out of the rift, which then gave a sphincter-tightening roar before closing itself off with a discreet _pop._

Finn and Jake landed on the snow.

"AUAUAUGGGHH!" opined Jake.

Finn knocked a few snowflakes out of his ear and giggled. "You should hear yourself, man," he said. "You sound like a total wuss."

"Well, _yeah_ I sound like a wuss! Why don't _you!"_ Jake shot back, twitching from head to foot. "I mean… did you _see_ that place we just went through, bro? Nightmare city!"

"Nahh, that was just the Night-O-Sphere," said Finn. "You were close, though."

Jake raised one ear. "The what now?"

"The Night-O-Sphere," Finn said again, smiling. "That place with the fire and pointy things unrighteous dudes and dudettes get sent to, remember? Marceline showed me around once. Her dad makes the meanest jambalaya."

Jake's features visibly drooped. "Aw, why'd you have to hang out with that chick, anyway, dude? I mean, what sorta stuff can you do with her that you can't do with me?"

"Um…"

"I mean, I mean, you _do_ know she's a _monster,_ right? A bloodsucking creature of the night?" said Jake, scowling and waggling his fingers to demonstrate. "I bet she only wants to fatten you up so she can suck all the red out of your insides. That's what vampires do; they're mean, heartless, dark, gruesome, ugly… mean… more gruesome… um, um…"

"Oh, _stop_ it," said Marceline. "You're making be blush."

Marceline was rising like a strand of smoke, or maybe like a stream of water falling upward, out of Finn's knapsack. She held her umbrella in one hand and it bathed her in a cylinder of darkness, shielding her from the early-morning sun. "By the way," she added, "you forgot this."

With her free hand, she reached into the ether and pulled out a weeping blob of cotton candy which, upon further inspection, proved to be Lumpy Space Princess.

_"Oh my lump, you guys,"_ she said, wide-eyed and heaving. What little hair she had was splayed in every direction, and she was crying copiously. "I'm, like, _soooooo_ lumping sorry for _everything_ I've done! _Sooooooooo_ lumping sorry… I'll never be mean to you guys _ever agaaaaiiiin…!"_

Marceline pulled down LSP's eyelid and had a peek. Then she smiled, slapped her amicably on the back, and turned to Finn and Jake. "Give her a week, boys, maybe two. She'll go back to her old ways in no time. For better or worse, I mean." She put her hands on the small of her back and bent over backwards, producing a truly disquieting _CRACK._ "Whoo! Aw_right! That_ was a kick!" she said. "So, um, whaddaya wanna do now, Finn? I think I've got a few more hours in me."

"Oh _no,_ you don't!"

Jake stepped forward between the two and had started to growl menacingly. "I don't know what you're up to, Marceline, but I'm _not_ gonna let you take my friend!"

Marceline pushed a strand of hair away from her eyes, as she does. "Pfft. I'm not doing anything, Jake. I'm just having fun! You _do _like fun, don't you?"

"Really, dude, it's cool..." Finn tried to say. But Jake would hear none of it.

"Don't play innocent with _me,_ sweet cheeks! You're pure evil and everyone knows it!" The little dog was visibly shaking now. "You just wanna, like, cut Finn open and eat him and turn him into your zombie slave or something! That's what you people _do,_ isn't it!"

Marceline inhaled abruptly.

Finn bit his lip hard. "Oh dear..."

"Well," said Marceline. "you wanna know what _I_ think? I think you're _jealous._ Oh, yeah! I think you're jealous because I actually _know_ how to show my friends a good time and Finn has way more fun hanging out with _me!"_ If she felt hurt at all, she hid it well; a sadistic grin had begun to creep onto her features, giving her a really frightful look. "How about it, Finn? You wanna have some _real_ adventures, you stick with me. If you'd rather learn how to lick your own crotch, well, you'll know who to turn to, won't you?"

"That's IT." Jake leapt onto Marceline, teeth bared, and clamped down hard on her forearm.

* * *

There wasn't a fight, not really. The skirmish lasted not one minute, not _half_ a minute... probably not even ten seconds. But by the end of it, Jake lay on his back feeling seriously sore, and Finn dug in his knapsack for a stray piece of cloth he might offer Marceline.

Jake could hardly believe it. He felt _incredibly_ hurt, but the bump on his head barely accounted for any of it. He'd attacked Marceline... but she hadn't been the one to fight him off.

His lip quivered, and so did his voice. He couldn't hide it. He couldn't have even if he'd wanted to. "Dude... h-how _could_ you..."

Finn wasn't feeling any better. "I'm sorry... I _had_ to... I mean... that was _really_ uncool, man..."

Marceline looked down at Jake with an expression of disgust. "You really should look into obedience training, Finn. I don't want another incident like this, y'know?"

"I know, I'm sorry... he's not _usually_ a bad dog..."

Jake's jaw dropped. _"Duuuuuude...!"_

Finn looked crestfallen. "I'm sorry, man," he said with a shrug. "I think you need some time to cool down."

That was it; Jake made the move from sadness to outrage. "Well, _fine!"_ Jake cried, throwing his arms in the air. "If _you_ don't want to be my homie anymore, then I'll find a _new_ homie! With blackjack! And _princesses!_ And he's gonna be _way_ better than _you_ two douchebags! I. Am. _Outta_ here. Come on, LSP." He grabbed the princess by the wrist, then turned heel and left in a huff, thinking angry thoughts.

"Yeah, hello, like, _Melissa?"_ said LSP, yammering on her cell phone. "Oh my _lump,_ gurrl, I'm _soooooo_ sorry about that time we were at that lumping _party_ and I, like, ate all your lumping powdered doughnuts…! I'm _sooooooooo_ lumping _sorry!"_ she cried. "What? No, there weren't _mummies!_ It was _ME! It was all me!_ I'm _soooooooooooo_ sorry! I'm a filthy piggy! I'm a big fat filthy piggy who's mean to her _friiiieeeends!"_

"Byeee~!" Marceline said in a singsong voice, wiggling her fingers at Jake. She then turned to Finn and hung her arm on his shoulders. "Come on, little guy; let's go have us a _real_ good time!"

Finn, feeling only slightly nauseous, peeked over his shoulder, a look of pain and confusion on his face. Jake did not return the gesture.

Together, he and Marceline wandered off…

_To be continued…_

* * *

**Author's Note:** My God, that was crap. Next one's better. Promise.


	7. My New Favorite People

**Author's Note:** Whew! Hello, everyone! Anyone miss me? Yes? No? Anyone? No?

Sorry for making you wait this long. I've been working on a ton of stuff for college as well as on some original fiction, so I didn't think I'd have the time to keep writing this fic. But recently I got a ton of feedback and alerts (thanks for that!), so I figured it'd be unfair to leave you guys hanging.

Man, a ton of stuff happened on _Adventure Time_ since last we met, eh? 'Go With Me' pretty much sank the Finn / Marceline ship, for one thing, Jake and Marceline are chummy, and apparently PB is thirteen now? Yikes. Well, we'll pretend this fic takes place sometime between 'It Came from the Night-O-Sphere' and 'Video Makers'. That should take care of the holes, I think.

Anyway, in this chapter I'm going to try something a little different. I still don't think I've written anything as good as chapter one, which had this really cool (unintentional) Douglas Adams vibe to it that I really liked. Hopefully this one will be up to form. And don't worry; Princess Bubblegum is _definitely_ here this time.

Enjoy!

* * *

_Two weeks later…_

7. My New Favorite People

"…and that's what happened," Jake said with a sigh.

He was sitting on a bar stool at the Booz n' Broozes, the premiere watering hole in the Marauders' Village. There was a banner up front reading:

**~ BOOZ N' BROOZES ~**

_Come for the prospect of inebriation, stay for the promise of cranial fracture!__ TM_

To his left sat Lumpy Space Princess, crinkling her nose and _ugh_-ing at the many sweaty men wrestling and breaking chairs over each other's backs behind her between sips of her diet cola, and to his right, dressed in an ill-fitting white button-up shirt and tie and generally looking like a clueless part-timer, sat the Guardian of the Well, nursing a beer.

The Guardian had a swig, slammed his glass down on the countertop and rubbed his chin broodingly. "Sounds rough," he said. "And you say you've been camping out with your, ah, lovely lady friend here ever since?"

"Pretty much," said Jake, staring into his cappuccino. "Can't really go back to the tree house, can I, now that Finn hates me and all. And with Lady out seeing her folks, well, there's not really much of a place for me _anywhere._ LSP's great, don't get me wrong; she knows where to find all the best cans of beans, but…" He glanced furtively to the left, then leaned right and whispered into the Guardian's ear. _"…she _never_ wants to go with me on any adventures!"_

LSP harrumphed and sipped her drink.

"Well, you can't fault her for _that,_ can you, Jake?" said the Guardian of the Well. _"Clearly _what we have here is a lady of distinguished taste; can't really expect her to go around digging for old trinkets in smelly old caves, no sir, not a classy lady like her." He leaned back, looked past Jake and smiled at the princess.

Her cheeks became a rosier shade of pink, but it was kind of hard to tell. "You see, Jake?" she said. _"This_ guy, like, lumping _gets_ it."

Jake fidgeted uncomfortably, drumming his fingers on the countertop. "Uh-_huh,"_ he said. "So, anyway, Guardian, I don't know what to do. Got any advice for an old yellow dog?"

The Guardian shrugged. "Tried eating him yet?" he asked. Lumpy Space Princess, unaccustomed to the ways of the Well People, gave an exaggerated giggle.

"What? _No!_ I can't eat my best friend! Or, like, my _former_ best friend… I think that's a little out of the question, dude."

"By the way, just eff-why-aye, I don't go by 'the Guardian of the Well' anymore," he said in a grand, self-important tone. "I… excuse me a minute."

Jake's friend raised his enormous head from the countertop, where it had made a rather gruesome dent.

"Ha-ha-_ha!_ I got you _good,_ eh, Nancy-boy?" laughed a nearby Marauder, cracking his knuckles loudly. "Whazza matta, you gonna _cry?_ You gonna show me what you got, or should I kick those fancy pants of yours straight to your momma's house? What _is_ that, anyway? _…business casual!"_

His drunken friends, sitting in a circle at the table behind him, roared with laughter and raised their flagons to the ceiling.

The Guardian stood up, grabbed his axe, and swung it full force at the combative Marauder. The flat side of it hit him square in the chest and sent him flying backwards into his friends' table, breaking it cleanly in half and dousing him in five flagons' worth of half-finished beer. A new wave of laughter spread through the Booz n' Broozes, followed by one of applause, and by the end of it the Guardian and his friends had been offered more than one extra round, on the house.

"Oh. My. _Lump,"_ said Lumpy Space Princess, floating over to the unoccupied stool on the Guardian's left. "You are, like, so… totally… _cut!_ Aren't you? Grawr!"

The Guardian chuckled immodestly. "Oh, well, y'know, you live in a well for a few thousand years, fighting dragons and wolverines for your breakfast and lunching only on your own homicidal rage and before you know it, yeah, you're so totally cut. _So_ glad you noticed."

"Grrnnff," said Jake, sliding into an even deeper slouch.

_"SoasIwassaying,"_ the Guardian went on, "they don't call me the 'Guardian of the Well' anymore. I'm the Clerk of the Mailroom now. Bossman says I have potential, so I'm kind of hoping to make it into outright delivery. I hear they've got this thing called 'going postal' I think I'd be very good at."

Lumpy laughed her lumpy laugh, drifting ever so slightly closer to the Clerk's left bicep. "Oh my lump! Totally cut _and,_ like, _a professional?_ You have _got_ to teach me how to like, _sort letters_ and junk sometime. You've _got_ to!"

"Well, I don't mean to brag or anything," the Clerk lied like a pig, making a big show of stretching his deltoids, "but around the office I'm kind of a legend for my twenty-five letter sort. It's a record, you see, kind of a big deal." He glanced at his watch a little too casually. "I've got time. If you want, maybe we could…"

"I _do_ want," Lumpy said, clutching the Clerk of the Mailroom's arm outright. "Lead the way, hotcake."

"Um, Guardian…" said Jake, beginning to fret a bit as his friend prepared to leave.

The Guardian, or the Clerk, paid him no mind at all. "I told the boys I'd be shooting for thirty this afternoon, so we might have a bit of a crowd… you'll hang around to _inspire_ me, won't you, love?"

_"Guardian!"_ Jake said again, and again to no avail. The Guardian, LSP in tow, had already walked out the door.

Meanwhile, the Marauder from earlier got on his feet and teetered unsteadily toward Jake, his vision swimming. "Aw, whazza matta, little doggie? Did that gay cloud steal your boyfriend?" he managed to say. The other Marauders, who'd started petting each other again, exploded with laughter.

The bartender slid a small slip of white paper over to Jake.

"What's _this?"_ Jake asked.

"The tab," the bartender said quite without emotion.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! I thought those last two rounds were complimentary!" Jake protested.

"Turns out they ain't," said the bartender with a devilish grin, polishing a weighty-looking steel bat. "Pay up."

So Jake groaned and reached for his wallet. The steel bat, meanwhile, fluttered upwards and hung upside-down from one of the rafters, squeaking periodically.

* * *

The Peppermint Butler bowed politely. "A guest for you, milady."

"Shh!" said Princess Bubblegum.

She stood cross-armed before an enormous computer monitor built into the wall of her lab. The screen was split vertically in half, and two leering faces stared down at the princess. One was hard and brown, the other soft and green, and neither of them looked pleased.

"But, um, you _see,_ your majesty," the Duke of Nuts burbled out, nervously wiping his brow with a white handkerchief, "Muscle Princess's Muscle Minions have actually made a bit of headway into the Duchy. This is, um, completely unannounced, you understand; I'd say they've made it about thirty miles in, taking in Hazel National Park and some of the Macadamia Viaduct… not all of it, mind, but, um, well, you _do_ understand why we think there's some cause for concern, don't you?"

"Hmm," said Princess Bubblegum, biting idly on her fingernail.

"I don't see what the hubbub's all about!" Muscle Princess grunted. "I'm sure you'll agree, Princess, that if the Duke were merely to _move_ his national boundaries a wee bit to the west, he'd find the lands my Minions have appropriated would no longer be his."

"Hmm," said Princess Bubblegum.

"Yes, but see," the Duke went on, "sometimes I like to take the kids out on a field day at Hazel, you know? It's kind of a family tradition, and they really _do_ like that swing set… would it _really_ be that much of a bother to step back a little bit? Just a bit, really, and then maybe we can share the park every other Sunday…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa!" said Muscle Princess. "I don't want my Muscle Minions sharing the National Park with _you._ On the grounds that your face looks like an old turd."

The Duke inhaled roughly and put a hand to his chest. "Well!" he said. "I certainly don't see what _that_ has to do with anything! Apologize! Apologize posthaste, you… awful… awful woman!"

Muscle Princess grinned self-assuredly "You got the muscles to make me, beanpole?"

"Beans aren't _nuts!"_ the Duke was quick to point out. "They're technically legumes. So there."

"_Enough,_ you two!" said Princess Bubblegum, and they both stood at attention.

Having regained the floor, Bubblegum nodded contentedly and said: "As proven by the Big Nose Kingdom's famous siege of the Four-Eyes Principality, name-calling will solve nothing. Now let's all take a chill pill and talk this over like grown-ups. Muscle Princess… why do you think you need to expand, again?"

Muscle Princess blushed and scratched at the back of her head, hardly an easy feat for someone with biceps the size of her head. "Um, well, we're kind of running out of room in the Muscle Kingdom. We're all too bulked up! We're down to a handful of tenants per square acre, and there's no more room for the chickens."

Princess Bubblegum raised an eyebrow. "Chickens?"

"Oh, yeah," said Muscle Princess. "You need BIG protein to build BIG muscles, you know! We Muscle People drink eighteen raw eggs every morning… and then eighteen more every hour after that! But we can't stand to keep the little guys cooped up in cages. We need a big field for them to roam around in, dangnabbit!"

The Duke of Nuts shrugged weakly. "I'd just rather keep that swing set, if that's all right with everyone," he said.

"Then I think we can come to a fair compromise," Bubblegum said, smiling happily. She turned to the Duke. "Wasn't there a broad, unoccupied stretch of land somewhere along the border? You know, the one where you tested out all those plutonium bombs?"

"That place is hardly habitable!" said a shocked Duke of Nuts. "Lingering radiation has caused the local earthworms to grow a thousand times their natural size."

Muscle Princess's face brightened up. "BIG earthworms, you say? BIG earthworms sound _exactly_ like what we'll need to keep our BIG chickens happy!" she said. "Oh please, Mr. Duke, may we please, please, please, _please_ let some of our chickens loose on your field? Then we can use the extra room to build some more gymnasiums, maybe a vitamin shop or two…"

"Hey, it's all yours!" said the Duke. "Giant earthworms give me the willies, anyway."

Bubblegum spread her arms wide. "Then it's settled!" she said. "Muscle Princess, you'll pull out of Hazel National Park, and Duke of Nuts, you'll hand over your radioactive wasteland to the chickens of the Muscle Kingdom. Now, was that so hard?"

Both the Duke and Muscle Princess stared ashamedly at their feet. "No, Princess Bubblegum…"

"Well, I hope you both learned something then," said Princess Bubblegum. "Let's keep this kind of silliness to a minimum from now on, okay?"

Her correspondents muttered something in reply.

"Good. Bubblegum out." She turned a dial on her computer monitor and the screen fizzled off.

Jake and the Peppermint Butler stood quietly as Princess Bubblegum poured herself a cup of water and drank it down heartily. "Whew! Sorry about that, boys; I had some last-minute politics to take care of. A princess's job is never done. Anyway…" She snapped her goggles back on. "What can I do you for?"

Princess Bubblegum's laboratory was a wonderland of candy-colored science. Her workbench seemed alive with half-completed biomechanical doodads, colorful concoctions bubbling in Erlenmeyer flasks and your standard assortment of scientific junk like litmus paper, Bunsen burners, strobe lights and those loop-de-loop plastic tubes. Bubblegum's eyes occasionally shifted to a series of test tubes arranged in an orderly row by a large chalkboard, on which a complex-seeming equation was scribbled.

Jake stepped forward sadly. "Finn and me had a fight, PB," he said. "I'm kind of in the market for a new best friend… um, do you mind if I crash with you for a while?"

Princess Bubblegum bit her lip. "Oh. Wow. Um. You know you're always welcome here in the Candy Kingdom, Jake," she said at last, "but I kinda have a lot on my plate at the moment." She waved a hand toward her workbench, specifically the neat row of test tubes. "See? I'm working on a top-secret formula that should make any food's flavor match its nutritional value with only a sprinkle, two tops!"

Jake turned his head to the side, a sure sign of doggie confusion.

Princess Bubblegum, deep in her element, smiled slyly. "It's a well-known scientific fact that all the healthiest foods in the world are also the worst-tasting," she explained. "With my new dietary supplement, the better something is for you, _the better it'll actually taste._ Think about it, Jake; one drop and, boom, we got asparagus flavored like chocolate pudding. Steamed spinach like mac and cheese. Artichokes like sugary gumdrops. Throw some kale into a blender and drink it like strawberry soda! The possibilities… are… _endless,_ Jake! _Endless…!"_

She let go of Jake's shoulders and took a moment to catch her breath and dab her forehead with a napkin.

"Not to mention," she went on, "we could slip a gallon or two of the stuff into the water main and that's our entire cannibalism endemic taken care of in one afternoon."

Jake grinned. "Ooh, I getcha! Hey, that's pretty great! Can I help?" He scampered over to Bubblegum's workbench and tinkered carelessly with her equipment. "I got the magic touch when it comes to this kinda thing, PB. One time Finn and I built a volcano with ketchup and dirt so I'm pretty much qualified to do chemistry now. Ahh, see, _there's_ your problem right here. There's not enough brown stuff in your orange stuff! We add a little drop here and…"

"Jake, NO!" shouted Bubblegum, lunging, not quickly enough, to slap Jake's hand away from the test tubes. "You can't mix the caramel fudge glycerin with the essence of pure carrot! If you do, they'll—"

_Drip._

The Peppermint Butler shut his eyes tight, then flew backwards clean across the room.

* * *

"…and don't you even _think_ about coming back! Do you hear me, Jake! You can't come back to the Candy Kingdom… EVER!"

Princess Bubblegum stood on the drawbridge, gnashing her teeth like flint stones. She would later rescind her decree, of course, but given that she still hadn't managed to snuff out all the fires on her garment, she sure as hell wouldn't do it soon.

The Peppermint Butler, a little charred and a little woozy but unhurt in the broad sense, waddled to her side. "Milady?" he asked.

Princess Bubblegum set her steely gaze on Jake, who was, at the moment, chasing the horizon as quickly as he could. She stroked her chin pensively.

_"Release the hounds,"_ she said.

* * *

A little yellow avatar flew up, up, up a pixilated green wonderland, swaying left and right to the tune of a dope techno beat. Up on top, advancing downward, came a squadron of ambiguously bat-shaped polygons, grimacing eight-bit grimaces and raining down lasers upon our fearless hero. But our hero's an old pro; he swooshes and swoops all through the passageway, and they all miss him by a nautical mile. He fires off a stream of bombs and boom! Down they go.

"Smooth as butter," chuckles Jake.

An alarm goes off; the remaining bats flank to the sides of the screen and fly off; a huge, possibly crab-shaped battleship lunges into sight, taking up most of the top of the screen. Two thick green rectangles protrude from its side and proceed to fire off dozens of thinner green lines, which fan out and ricochet off the passageway's walls. Our fearless yellow hero drags his feet a bit; he takes a direct hit and blinks intermittently for a while. On the bottom right corner of the screen, one of his icons blinks out of sight.

"Hmm," says Jake.

He'll have to be more careful now. He turns his swooshing up to eleven; dual laser beams pass him by on either side, and he fires off another stream of bomb. The crab ship flashes red and ups the ante. Two more gun turrets, the thick green rectangles, protrude from its mass. The barrage begins anew, doubly dangerous, deadlier than ever.

Jake shoots and shoots and shoots, and flies to and fro to avoid the laser blasts. Gradually, the long yellow bar at the top of the screen shortens, and in a minute it's only a stub on the left side of the screen, and then Jake shoots one more bomb and it disappears altogether. Eight-bit explosions rock the ship and, defeated, it vanishes off the top of the screen. Our fearless yellow hero spins around joyously and follows suit.

Blocky white letters appear on the center of the screen:

_**CONGLATURATION!**_

**NAME ENTRY? _ _ _**

Jake's name isn't in the number-one spot. It's one notch above FIN, but one beneath MVQ and, a bit unfairly, two beneath BMO. 999,999 points beneath, to be specific. He selects the desired initials (ASS) and calls it a day.

"I've had enough," he said, a bit lacking in spirit.

The black screen became teal, and a simple pixilated face appears thereon, smiling amicably.

"All right, Jake," said Beemo. "Did you have fun?"

"Yes. Sort of. No," Jake replied, crossing his arms and generally looking frumpy.

Beemo's smile pulled a one-eighty. "Ohh. I'm sorry, Jake. Stop that." He smacked Jake square on the nose with a rolled-up magazine.

The little dog growled a little, but he _did_ stop licking his wound. _One of_ his wounds, anyway. He sighed. "Thanks, Beemo," he said. "I needed that."

The hounds had really done a number on him; his fur was coming off in clumps and the patches of bare pink skin were covered in crisscrossing scratches. He had a hangnail, too, but that was more or less unrelated. The fact of the matter was, he wouldn't be going on any adventures for a while, and all he could do until he'd properly healed was sit in the shade and play video games. Luckily, he was personally acquainted with one.

"No problem," chirped Beemo. "Do you want to try something different now? I'm sure I can think of something. An adventure game this time, maybe, or maybe some nice platforming?"

Jake shook his head. "Nahh, I think I'm all partied out, little dude. Let's… oh, let's just sit back and watch the sunset or _something."_

"Okay." Beemo moved to Jake's side and plopped himself on the grass.

The sun had begun to graze the horizon. The sky was a lovely hot pink. Beemo let out a contented sigh, but Jake had a storm cloud in the brain.

"Can you believe that dumb ol' Finn is hanging out with _Marceline_ again?" he said offhandedly, pronouncing Marceline's name as though he had poison on the tongue.

"I know," said Beemo. "He is so lucky."

Gradually, _gradually,_ Jake turned to face him, and squinted. _"Excuse_ me!"

"Finn is hanging out with Marceline," Beemo clarified, innocently. "Marceline is very super great. She knows _just_ the right way to press my buttons."

_"BEEMO!"_

"Actually…" Two little red splotch marks appeared at the sides of Beemo's mouth. "She said I was very cute, you know. In fact… she said she was _invested_ in me."

"All right, that's enough!" said a very angry Jake. "Time out, Beemo! Go over there and think about what you've said."

"Huh?"

"Over _there,"_ said Jake, waving a hand in some sort of general direction. "There!"

"…okay." Beemo waddled off. He sat on the grass, away from Jake, and thought of Marceline.

Jake, meanwhile, lay down on his back and stared at the sky, his entire body aching something fierce. A few minutes later, his eyelids grew heavy, and sleep overtook him.

_To be continued…_

* * *

**Author's Note:** Okay, how was _that?_ Good enough to make up for my long absence? ;)

BIG THANKS to everyone who's reviewed! You guys are totally math, please keep it up! I'll keep writing the fic, but don't expect me to update too often. I'm working on a ton of stuff and this, unfortunately, can't be top priority.

See ya next time!


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